My youngest and I often do the “Find 6 Different Things” in the Sunday comics. He is good at finding anomalies. All day at work I showed the picture in the link that follows and asked: What is wrong with this picture?

Almost everyone found at least one thing wrong (I find two) in less than 10 seconds, my 12 year old included.

Well, according to what I was taught in nursing college, she needs to put on some gloves, tie back her hair, remove the ring and the wristwatch, and most importantly STOP POKING HOLES IN THE PATIENT FOR NO GOOD REASON.

The feng shui in the room in the second photo has been severely compromised, i.e. the table should be round, not square. The corners of the existing table interfere greatly with the facilitation of smooth energy flow. Huge blunder.

Well, at first I was gonna say that the student isn’t wearing gloves and the instructor doesn’t seem bothered by that. Then I realized, of course, that since ‘naturopathic medicine’ is science-based, the student is obviously using a toothpick and not piercing skin, so no gloves needed. Duh.

I noticed the lack of gloves immediately (phew, wouldn’t want to be bested by a 12-year-old). The second problem took me a little while. There have been some good guesses by people not familiar with the acupuncture literature. The true error is that she is needling the chi hua hua point; which is no longer considered effective.

Gloves is definitely an issue, but I don’t see why the lack of a lab coat would matter. In fact, from what I’ve read about the UK going to ‘Nothing past the elbows’, or whatever that policy is called, it seems like going without a nasty lab coat with long sleeves is probably a good thing.

I didn’t state it but the whole presentation was not aseptic. Perhaps the doctors will comment on a “labcoat” vs. “scrubs” for such a procedure; fresh scrubs would be more hygienic. As for “nothing past the elbows,” we may see guidelines asking males to forgo wearing neckties.

Hair in her face.
Loose clothes and a long sleeved sweater.
Rings.
He’s also got a sweater and long sleeves on.

@ Kimball Atwood– Even with no piercing of skin, no gloves is ridiculous. Have you ever had a doctor perform an examination without gloves? And of your FEET? Even physical therapists will wear gloves when touching a patient’s bare feet.

Hmm…is it just me or does that patient’s left foot look more than a tad swollen. Could be just a trick of the light and the camera angle…

However, I feel confident that there can’t be anything wrong in the picture…after all, there is a real Chinese person supervising the procedure. Just as I know from watching many movies that all Chinese know martial arts I’m sure I can be just as confident that the ancient Chinese wisdom of acupuncture supervised by an actual Chinese person means that the treatment is completely safe and efficacious. Duh. I mean it is ancient, it is easy to understand (you just need to adjust the Qi flow) *and* it is exotic. So it has to work. QED.

Obviously you guys know nothing about the science of naturopathic medicine – it is well-known that gloves impede the flow of qi, plus they are so cold and unfeeling. Anyway, acupuncture balances the immune system so there are no infection-shaped holes in your aura, making sterility a non-issue.

I cannot speak for anyone else, but scenes like this make me real glad that I got the fuck out of Portland, Oregon about a year back. Portland is a beautiful city and shall always remain in my memories, but it is too woo-infested for my liking. Even when I tried to set up a regular primary care physician for my wife and me, as a postdoc in OHSU (those familiar with Portland will know what it is ;)), the university health center very nearly shunted us to practitioners of the holistic/integrative medicine crap. Just look here for a sample! What I cannot understand is this: some of the people here have had the benefit of very good medical education at premier institutions in the country. How can they remain true to their education, training and profession, if they choose to muck about in the pseudoscience of integrative medicine? Or am I just being naive?

Also on the snarky side: Since you can identify and treat every single disease known to man (and a few that don’t actually exist) by fucking around with people’s feet shouldn’t you blank out the soles of the patient’s feet to protect their anonymity?

Right now I’ve read the other comments…

You don’t need labcoats to practice medicine. It’s just an affectation.

No gloves needed, as acupuncture has been safely used for at least two thirds of human evolution in China where they don’t subscribe to the germ theory of disease (stupid European dead white males and their semmelweissian theories)

Kausik Datta, med students are kept in a state of extended adolescence and suggestibility. This helps them soak up everything they are told like super-sponges. But it leaves them vulnerable to pseudoscience, particularly if their senior colleagues are woo friendly.

I must say that the responses often made me laugh out loud and we have an astute and funny readership.

We should have the occasional photo from the world of woo just so the readers can make a comment.

The two things I saw were
1) The lack of gloves on the hands and
2) There appears to be two boxes of gloves on the shelves behind the student. So while they have them, they don’t know how to use them. I often pull two left handed gloves out of the box, perhaps they pulled a left handed glove out for the right hand and a right handed glove for the left.

Here is a reference as to why it might be important for an acupuncturist to understand germs:

OBJECTIVE: To describe an outbreak of invasive methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infection after percutaneous needle procedures (acupuncture and joint injection) performed by a single medical practitioner.
SETTING: A medical practitioner’s office and 4 hospitals in Perth, Western Australia. PATIENTS: Eight individuals who developed invasive MRSA infection after acupuncture or joint injection performed by the medical practitioner.
METHODS: We performed a prospective and retrospective outbreak investigation, including MRSA colonization surveillance, environmental sampling for MRSA, and detailed molecular typing of MRSA isolates. We performed an infection control audit of the medical practitioner’s premises and practices and administered MRSA decolonization therapy to the medical practitioner. RESULTS: Eight cases of invasive MRSA infection were identified. Seven cases occurred as a cluster in May 2004; another case (identified retrospectively) occurred approximately 15 months earlier in February 2003. The primary sites of infection were the neck, shoulder, lower back, and hip: 5 patients had septic arthritis and bursitis, and 3 had pyomyositis; 3 patients had bacteremia, including 1 patient with possible endocarditis. The medical practitioner was found to be colonized with the same MRSA clone [ST22-MRSA-IV (EMRSA-15)] at 2 time points: shortly after the first case of infection in March 2003 and again in May 2004. After the medical practitioner’s premises and practices were audited and he himself received MRSA decolonization therapy, no further cases were identified.
CONCLUSIONS: This outbreak most likely resulted from a breakdown in sterile technique during percutaneous needle procedures, resulting in the transmission of MRSA from the medical practitioner to the patients. This report demonstrates the importance of surveillance and molecular typing in the identification and control of outbreaks of MRSA infection.

MRSA? MRSA??? If a patient gets MRSA its because they didn’t have the right positive attitude and Qi flow…You act like MRSA is some sort of dangerous pathogenic bacteria or something rather than a symptom of a patient’s energy flow being out of alignment.

Sheesh, trying to blame a TCM practitioner for the negative thoughts of a patient…really, some people…trying to play the situation for Qieap laughs…

Well, I have to say that since the “patient’s” aura was bluish and the heart chakra was eminating a wondrous yellow healing light, plus the obvious fact that there was an indigo quartz necklace on the “patient” (seen in the crystal glow from the luminescent structure of deep quartz), that the instructor was actually the one laying on the table. The student was the gentleman on the left, and the true patient was the one inserting the needle. Trick question! Well played, Dr. Crislip. Well played.

…which reminds me, I wonder if their is a Traditional Chinese Medicine version of the kids game Operation? Where you have to push the needles into the meridians just right, except the buzzer never goes off since you can actually put acupuncture needles anywhere…

this is the most funniest set of comments i believe the internets has evar generated. keep ‘em coming!

–i am not the first to say “faux-riental.” it did occur to me one day out of the blue, but a quick Google prevented me from laying claim. I have been around these faux-rientals a good bit, starting in the 80s — I was studying Indian epistemology, and stumbled across various pasty white guys treading a deliberate path into the Asian Studies Library (they are known by those black canvas karate slippers) to seek enlightenment – or at least an identity.

…on the other hand, your thinking is constrained your reductionist Western Imperialist orthography. There is no objective reality but the one we make through our quantum observations. My spelling is a different paradigm. It is a an ancient, natural holistic form of thought communication (and therefore superior) and can’t be judged by your western reductionism!

Honestly, the fact that they are touching the herbs with their hands and that their is dangling down should not be a real concern. First, the peaches and the tomatoes we buy at grocery stores have been handled by even less-hygiene-conscious people and we still eat them. This is why we have an immune system after all. Also, these herbs are destined to be boiled for 20-60 minutes, which kills almost all organic pathogens.

But, the real menace is elsewhere. Most these herbs come from China where there are almost no regulations on heavy metal content of botanicals. This is why a consumer protection NGO by the name of As You Sow took action a few years ago against the presence of lead, arsenic, cadmium and mercury in herbs and other “medicinal” remedies imported from China and other developing countries. You can read more about it here:

Since my practice deals with health care worker needlesticks and other biological occupational exposures, I was called to an acupuncture school for such an event. A student suffered a needlestick while handling an acupuncture needle after it was used. I was quite bothered to find out acupuncture needles (according to this school and the package they come in) only need to be clean, not sterile.

I will say they accepted hepatitis B and influenza vaccinations and I’ve been vaccinating the students and staff ever since the event. I hope they listen to my suggestions about needle safety and infection control.

In this state we have legislators passing legislation that amounts to practicing medicine without a license. They have mandated we not use vaccines with thimerosal in kids under 3yrs and in pregnant women, despite the CDC position (and all the evidence) that thimerosal is safe. Yet the practice of sticking nonsterile needles into people in clinics where people come in for infections goes unaddressed.

And allowing these sCAM practices to continue despite the fact there is little or no evidence supporting the effectiveness of these practices doesn’t seem to concern either the state or the federal legislators in the US.

no gloves.
hair hanging down over her face and over the suckerpatient.
oh, and she’s sticking a needle into someone with the false hope that the act of doing so will cause some positive medical outcome.
Oh, and they’re not wearing the right uniforms.
In this case, the right uniforms would be those orange jumpsuits the jails issue. Fraud is illegal in all 50 states.

I looked at the picture without reading any of the text first. My first impression was that the lady was showing the student how to do the filament “light touch” test for diabetic peripheral neuropathy. My first guess at “what is wrong with this picture” was that one does not typically do this on the medial malleolus.